Virtue signaling

As my conversation with the Progressive in 2008 showed, a politician’s actual abilities or wisdom are beside the point. What matters is that the candidate is “one of us.” This is why the Progressive sheeple in my world support Hillary notwithstanding the corruption and failure that hang around her like flies around a sheep’s carcass. She does all the right virtue signaling, thereby ensuring those nervous, insecure “us” people that, by supporting her, they are proving again their bona fides. Trump, no matter his wealthy upbringing and Wharton degree, fails when it comes to that oh-so-comfortable virtue signaling. Put some pro-Hillary and anti-Trump posters on your Facebook page and you will be perennially popular at parties.

…My Leftist friends like strong conclusions, unbounded by facts. They basically say that he failed “virtue signaling 101.” Their current frenzy is the fact that decades ago he said that a beauty queen who had gained weight in violation of her contract had . . . well, gained weight in violation of her contract.

And you know what? Because Trump is vulgar (which he is), he made the point in a vulgar way. As far as the “us” people are concerned, it’s infinitely worse, and less virtuous, to be vulgar than it is for someone like Hillary to use every bit of power and influence at hand to destroy completely the women who came forward and honestly stated that Hillary’s husband had raped them, assaulted them just shy of rape, or slandered them by calling them liars for speaking honestly about their sexual affairs with him.

When you run with the “not one of us” snobs, you can overlook some vicious, dishonest behavior in the service of abortion rights, but God forbid someone should be vulgar.

…And here’s where we get to the shallow “us” people mind. They don’t want to know that the facts are different. They don’t want to know that Trump was castigating the Mexican government for using America as a dumping ground for its criminals or that Trump said that the US should put a moratorium on taking in Muslim refugees until there is a way to weed out the bombers. Nor do Progressives want to know that Trump demands only that the government abide by existing immigration laws or that St. Jimmy Carter himself put a moratorium on bombing Muslims back in 1979. Facts are irrelevant.

“He’s a misogynist!” women and their pet men shriek.

Trump likes the ladies and, because he is vulgar, speaks of them in public in ways more appropriate to a locker or smoking room. Hillary savagely attacks and tries to destroy the same ladies her husband savagely attacked. Doesn’t matter. The short version is that Trump is vulgar; Hillary is vicious. Vulgar loses every time.

“He’s a tax cheat!” the “us” people are now gloating.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t even bother telling them that, thanks to the New York Times‘ grossly illegal conduct, there’s currently no evidence of cheating. The only thing the Times can do is surmise that, based on known losses Trump suffered in the 1990s, it’s possible that he could have taken advantage of tax code provisions to write those losses off in subsequent years. Nor does it matter that the New York Times, in 2014, despite having profits (that’s a surprise) actually — not speculatively, but actually — paid no taxes. And please, don’t waste your time sharing with them this marvelous Judge Learned Hand quotation from 1934:

Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.

You’ll also be wasting time if you point out to the “us” people that Hillary and Bill funneled hundreds of millions of dollars through a tax-free foundation that donates to charity only 6% of the money it collects. The rest is used — tax-free — to keep Hillary and her family in highrises.

Again, that’s all irrelevant. The sheeple understand what’s important, which is that Trump is vulgar. The New York Times is not vulgar. It’s “one of us.”

…A Hillary victory will not just be a victory for an unprincipled, corrupt, incompetent woman. It will also mark the ascendancy of an educated class that has abandoned substance in favor of the type of posturing last seen in the corrupt, unprincipled, and guillotine-bound court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Just as Trump is a symptom, not a cause, of middle- and working-class Americans ground down by decades of being taxed and sidelined, Hillary is a symptom (and, I think, a cause) of a self-styled American elite that rejoices in its ignorance so long as its positions and appearance signal its importance.